Senior Bowl Diary: Day 1

Written by Mike Daneshgar on January 23, 2012

Senior Bowl Diary: Day 1

Monday practices started off with Weigh-Ins. Official measurements will be posted soon. Looking at shirtless dudes can give a pretty solid grasp of their physique and possibly hint at their work ethic (in the gym at least). Not all players were comment worthy but here are some of the notes that I jotted down about random players as they came up.

(Alphabetical order)

OT Mike Adams OSU

Extremely long, really cool tattoos (sorry, I had to)

CB Brandon Boykin UGA

Jacked, probably has the lowest body fat percentage of all the prospects in Mobile

LB Zach Brown UNC

Hearing that he runs a 4.4 I was expecting him to be more of a gym rat but he just appeared to be normal, not overly jacked and obviously not out of shape.

DE/DT Quinton Coples UNC

Like his teammate Brown, not super toned. In fact, Coples had a smidge of belly fat.

QB Kirk Cousins MSU

For a quarterback, he’s surprisingly toned but a bit on the thin side.

DE Jack Crawford PSU

Appeared to be carrying a few extra lbs

QB Nick Foles Arizona

Large frame, did a shrug and a Justin Beiber hair-flip after hearing he’s 6’5

Underwhelming. Most RBs are toned or cut, Polk is clearly not a gym rat. Very normal looking.

DT Brandon Thompson Clemson

Healthy 311 lbs, doesn’t carry too much extra weight

DT Kendall Reyes UCONN

Solid fitness level, not fat at all for a 300 lbs

DE Courtney Upshaw UA

Very cut but shorter than I expected, his arm measurement wasn’t good either

DT Billy Winn BSU

I was going to list Winn as a DE/DT but he was looking very chunky so either he wants to play DT or doesn’t care about his body that much.

OG Kevin Zeitler Wisconsin

Had his ankles taped for some reason, probably to avoid ankle sprains while walking

As for practice, we had to choose either North or South (only a 1 time thing) so I went with South, where the team worked out at a Fairhope Stadium. It rained heavily before practice so the field was sloppy and in poor shape. I focused mostly on the QBs, DBs, and WRs because the players were only wearing top-pads.

Joe Adams definitely stood out today with two acrobatic diving catches. Hopefully we can see him on a dry field tomorrow but looked shifty, aggressive, catches with his hands. The crowd ate him up too.

On one play, Nick Foles had Clemson FB Craig Diehl beating his man on a wheel route, hesitated, and checked it down. After that play, safety Antonio Allen (playing in cover-2 over the top) yelled “Throw that (expletive that rhymes with spit)!” Had he thrown it earlier, he had Diehl, but Foles was gunshy.

Patrick Edwards had a case of the dropsies, having two of the most blatant drops of the afternoon. He looked smooth in his routes though, very good waist bend.

Zach Brown look good in coverage early on, deflecting away the first two throws his way (which would have been for minimal gain either way).

Janoris Jenkins attempted to play press coverage on Jeff Fuller and he had the press at first but ended up on the ground. I’m not sure if it was due to the slippery footing or if Fuller forced him down. Either way, I don’t know if Jenkins is going to earn his bread by pressing Fuller, who looked much better than I expected today.

The quarterbacks as a whole were a bit sloppy. None of them really stood out. Ryan Lindley in particular looked a bit uncomfortable dropping back from center. His footwork seemed sloppy. Brandon Weeden had some pretty looking throws and was the quarterback who got first reps. Nick Foles came up short on one throw in particular which slipped on the grass 5 yards short and skipped into a cameraman on the sideline. It’s tough to be critical on these guys throwing to guys they aren’t familiar with but they all seemed very gunshy and indecisive. Maybe that’s something which is normal for Senior Bowl practices becauase this is the first I’ve attended.

I’ll try to get more notes on the linemen tomorrow but that’s all for now. Hopefully you guys are enjoying my Senior Bowl coverage. There’s so many things happening at once that it’s information overload.

In case you aren’t already, follow me on Twitter and get live updates from Mobile.

Mike Daneshgar

Mike is a contributor to the DraftBreakdown team whose obsession with talent evaluation and teambuilding sprouted from the many failures of his beloved Cleveland Browns. His goal is to one day say that he gets paid to work in football. In between being a Master's student at the University of Florida and working with DraftBreakdown, Mike also writes pieces for the ProFootballFocus.com Dynasty staff.

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